FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. CHAPTER I. ACTION AS THE SUBJECT OF ETHICAL SCIENCE. 1. Ethics a practical science. Ethics, or moral philosophy, the one designation being of Greek and the other of Latin origin, and, as now used, meaning precisely the same thing, -is a practical science. Not that ethics is any less theoretical than other sciences, for every science is necessarily a theory, but it is a theory pertaining to practice, and for the sake of practice. The term practical, therefore, refers wholly to the object-matter and end of the science. Ethics, then, even in theory, is entirely practical in its scope, since it sup (7) plies us with principles by which we may deter mine the right in each case. Hence what is commonly called practical ethics deserves this name, by way of distinction, only because it actually applies these principles to the various relations of life, and deduces hence a general code of morals for the benefit of those who have not the intelligence or the leisure to deduce, in each case, their duty for themselves. 2. It is the science of the laws of right action in the individual. Ethics, then, treats of action. It does not, however, treat of action in all its aspects, nor under all relations. It treats only of the acts of intelligent beings, and, indeed, as it is a human science, only of human acts. Its principles may, or may not, apply to the acts of other intelligent beings; it is enough for us to know that they apply to ours. And of human acts, in strictness, it treats only of those belonging to man as an individual, unchanged by any of the artificial arrangements of society, and personally responsible to the right from the very nature which God has given him, and the circumstances and relations under which he has placed him. Ethics is thus the science of the conditions or laws of right action in man as a moral agent. The science of right conduct in man, as a member of civil society, and as far as his duties are modified by the special arrangements of such society, constitutes what in propriety is called political philosophy. 3. It views acts only as right or wrong. Acts present themselves to us under various aspects, as awkward or graceful, agreeable or disagreeable, civil or uncivil, proper or improper, wise or unwise, and the like; but moral philosophy treats of them only as right or wrong. It is true that some of the other distinctions of acts here named, or which might be named, approach in significance the distinction of them into right and wrong, and may in certain cases be substituted for that, but not generally. They are none of them equivalent to it, nor necessarily even of a moral nature. Thus, a right act is, in one sense, always a proper act; i. e., |